Nice to see some data digging instead of the piles of posts that are just partisans thinking they’ll predict the outcome based on what they want to happen/their priors/vibes. What’s your take on the early vote so far?
The GOP turnout is quite remarkable. There has been some grumbling from some of the party mavens that Trump's team has once again been neglecting the ground game, but someone has certainly gotten the word out to GOP voters that early voting was the new cool thing to do.
If we look just at party affiliation, however, I'm not sure that is quite the advantage some think it is. On a national basis, AtlasIntel found 2.8pp more GOP defections to Harris than Democrat defections to Trump, which could indicate that more of these GOP ballots are actually votes for Harris than Democrat ballots are votes for Trump.
At the same time, early voting in the minds of many is equated with voter enthusiasm, and that's a hard metric to capture in polling. Are people more enthusiastic about voting for Donald Trump or voting for Kamala Harris? If Trump voters have greater enthusiasm the early turnout game may have the filtering effect of simply discouraging GOP votes that otherwise would have gone to Harris from voting at all, which could negate that edge Harris has among voters willing to vote against party identification.
There have been several reports, though anecdotal, that black turnout is down in several places, and that would seem to confirm an enthusiasm gap. It's not hard to fathom how Democrats might be lacking in enthusiasm, given that a greater number of Democrats disapprove of Biden's Presidency than Republicans approve, and that a far greater number of 2020 Biden voters disapprove than 2020 Trump voters approve. Especially after 2020, Trump voters have an incentive to turnout en masse, as a heavy Trump vote early on would be the strongest signal to send to Democrats not to attempt any ballot shenanigans (and there WAS evidence of more than a few ballot shenanigans in 2020) by making the vote "too big to rig."
Turnout and the election itself will boil down to enthusiasm for how the Biden Presidency has gone vs enthusiasm for a change of direction. Do voters believe corporate media that the economy is doing well or do voters generally believe corporate media is full of crap? Do voters believe Harris will actually do something about border security and illegal immigration? Does the argument that Harris has not done anything about the issues of greatest importance to voters resonate with voters?
I think it's telling that polling guru Nate Silver is listening to his "gut" when he says Trump has a 55% chance of winning. That's in the same range as the RCP betting aggregate and only somewhat below where Polymarket is at. Broadly, the betting community is solidly behind a Trump victory, and that's not a trend that can be explained away as speculators manipulating betting markets for a quick buck.
As I said in my analysis, I'm not going so far out on a limb to say that Trump's on a glide path to re-election, but you do have to like his chances right now.
I noticed that the in the education component of the Atlas-Intel sample, the college degree or higher - at 46-48% - seems maybe unduly high? True, turnout is higher for that demographic than for lower education levels, but lower education voters trend heavily for Trump.
If they are underrepresented in the sample results could be skewed in favor of Harris, no?
One other thing - Trafalgar also has a very respectable rating, did you check for or note any discrepancies between their findings and Atlas-Intel's?
Criticism of polls often comes down to whether or not a particular demographic is oversampled or undersampled relative to actual voter turnout.
And with good reason. If the composition of the voter turnout deviates significantly from the composition of the sample population, the poll is going to be skewed.
Did AtlasIntel oversample college-educated voters? That is of course a possibility, and that could skew the numbers towards harris.
In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, AtlasIntel's poll sample favored Republicans over Democrats by 3.6pp. In Michigan, the sample was more evenly distributed. AtlasIntel also projects a smaller Independent voter demographic in Pennsylvania than in Wisconsin or Michigan.
Last month Gallup released a party identification poll which showed people tended to identify more as Republican than as Democrat by about 3pp (31%-28%) with Independents being the largest identifying demgraphic. If we go by the Gallup distribution, Pennsylvania undersampled Independents and oversampled both Democrats and Republicans. while Michigan and Wisconsin likely undersampled Independents.
Nationwide, Trump does very well among Independents, according to AtlasIntel. In Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, Kamala Harris does slightly better than Trump among Independents.
We won't know until the final vote tallies where the oversampling and undersampling actually occurs.
As regards Trafalgar Group's polling, their latest Michigan and Pennsylvania polls show Trump leading by about the same margins as AtlasIntel. Trafalgar was the second most accurate pollster for 2020, so their numbers do tend to reinforce AtlasIntel's.
Browser issues - or something - aren't letting me like replies - thanks for responding.
BTW - interesting House race to watch (don't know of any polling) - Ohio CD-7, probably the only one where an independent has a shot.
Novice China oriented Dem v. rabid Zio-supporting Republican incumbent Max Miller v. peacenik veteran former (Dem) Rep. Dennis Kucinich, running as an independent.
Not getting hopes up, but it would be great to see the district deliver a big FU to the Uniparty there.
Peter, how did you know that I was just now literally craving NUMBERS? Never mind all the speculation, guesses, and extrapolation- what are the latest numbers? And like Santa Claus, you answer my wish with a large bagful of the latest hard data of numbers. Thank you, kind sir!
That being said, I think this election is going to involve a bunch of factors that are hard to quantify in the polls. A long-standing male Democrat may - possibly without being conscious of it - ‘feel like a wuss’ if he votes for Harris. A vote for Trump is a ‘manly’ vote. That will be countered by the huge fear factor being ramped up on females that ‘Trump is a Hitler who will take away all of our rights!’ How many votes will be decided last-minute because of psychological factors like these?
You’re right, Peter, the winner of this election cannot be called just yet!
But, the election is over in less than 50 hours! What could possibly happen to affect the outcome in two days time? I’d sure like to hear anyone’s speculation on that!
A major bust by the ABC agency of the XYZ voting machine would do it, except that would require someone at some agency to do something, and with this government that is not going to happen, or will it?
A major bust involving Dominion voting machines would have an incalculable effect on the election.
There has never been a situation in the whole of US history where the entire results of an election arguably were invalidated, yet that would be one conceivable outcome of such an event.
I'm not even sure the Constitution has a mechanism to address such an event.
Something like that would mean all bets are off, including the ones where the Republic survives.
Without Democratic “ballots” I feel most of the country is for Trump, just how stupid do you have to be to vote for poverty. That said the members of the government, local, state, federal, will vote overwhelmingly for Kamala. Georgia, South Carolina, Florida all are definitely Trump Country, even if they steal one of the three!
Nice to see some data digging instead of the piles of posts that are just partisans thinking they’ll predict the outcome based on what they want to happen/their priors/vibes. What’s your take on the early vote so far?
The GOP turnout is quite remarkable. There has been some grumbling from some of the party mavens that Trump's team has once again been neglecting the ground game, but someone has certainly gotten the word out to GOP voters that early voting was the new cool thing to do.
If we look just at party affiliation, however, I'm not sure that is quite the advantage some think it is. On a national basis, AtlasIntel found 2.8pp more GOP defections to Harris than Democrat defections to Trump, which could indicate that more of these GOP ballots are actually votes for Harris than Democrat ballots are votes for Trump.
At the same time, early voting in the minds of many is equated with voter enthusiasm, and that's a hard metric to capture in polling. Are people more enthusiastic about voting for Donald Trump or voting for Kamala Harris? If Trump voters have greater enthusiasm the early turnout game may have the filtering effect of simply discouraging GOP votes that otherwise would have gone to Harris from voting at all, which could negate that edge Harris has among voters willing to vote against party identification.
There have been several reports, though anecdotal, that black turnout is down in several places, and that would seem to confirm an enthusiasm gap. It's not hard to fathom how Democrats might be lacking in enthusiasm, given that a greater number of Democrats disapprove of Biden's Presidency than Republicans approve, and that a far greater number of 2020 Biden voters disapprove than 2020 Trump voters approve. Especially after 2020, Trump voters have an incentive to turnout en masse, as a heavy Trump vote early on would be the strongest signal to send to Democrats not to attempt any ballot shenanigans (and there WAS evidence of more than a few ballot shenanigans in 2020) by making the vote "too big to rig."
Turnout and the election itself will boil down to enthusiasm for how the Biden Presidency has gone vs enthusiasm for a change of direction. Do voters believe corporate media that the economy is doing well or do voters generally believe corporate media is full of crap? Do voters believe Harris will actually do something about border security and illegal immigration? Does the argument that Harris has not done anything about the issues of greatest importance to voters resonate with voters?
I think it's telling that polling guru Nate Silver is listening to his "gut" when he says Trump has a 55% chance of winning. That's in the same range as the RCP betting aggregate and only somewhat below where Polymarket is at. Broadly, the betting community is solidly behind a Trump victory, and that's not a trend that can be explained away as speculators manipulating betting markets for a quick buck.
As I said in my analysis, I'm not going so far out on a limb to say that Trump's on a glide path to re-election, but you do have to like his chances right now.
Hi, Peter - nice work.
I noticed that the in the education component of the Atlas-Intel sample, the college degree or higher - at 46-48% - seems maybe unduly high? True, turnout is higher for that demographic than for lower education levels, but lower education voters trend heavily for Trump.
If they are underrepresented in the sample results could be skewed in favor of Harris, no?
One other thing - Trafalgar also has a very respectable rating, did you check for or note any discrepancies between their findings and Atlas-Intel's?
Criticism of polls often comes down to whether or not a particular demographic is oversampled or undersampled relative to actual voter turnout.
And with good reason. If the composition of the voter turnout deviates significantly from the composition of the sample population, the poll is going to be skewed.
Did AtlasIntel oversample college-educated voters? That is of course a possibility, and that could skew the numbers towards harris.
In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, AtlasIntel's poll sample favored Republicans over Democrats by 3.6pp. In Michigan, the sample was more evenly distributed. AtlasIntel also projects a smaller Independent voter demographic in Pennsylvania than in Wisconsin or Michigan.
Last month Gallup released a party identification poll which showed people tended to identify more as Republican than as Democrat by about 3pp (31%-28%) with Independents being the largest identifying demgraphic. If we go by the Gallup distribution, Pennsylvania undersampled Independents and oversampled both Democrats and Republicans. while Michigan and Wisconsin likely undersampled Independents.
Nationwide, Trump does very well among Independents, according to AtlasIntel. In Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, Kamala Harris does slightly better than Trump among Independents.
We won't know until the final vote tallies where the oversampling and undersampling actually occurs.
As regards Trafalgar Group's polling, their latest Michigan and Pennsylvania polls show Trump leading by about the same margins as AtlasIntel. Trafalgar was the second most accurate pollster for 2020, so their numbers do tend to reinforce AtlasIntel's.
Browser issues - or something - aren't letting me like replies - thanks for responding.
BTW - interesting House race to watch (don't know of any polling) - Ohio CD-7, probably the only one where an independent has a shot.
Novice China oriented Dem v. rabid Zio-supporting Republican incumbent Max Miller v. peacenik veteran former (Dem) Rep. Dennis Kucinich, running as an independent.
Not getting hopes up, but it would be great to see the district deliver a big FU to the Uniparty there.
Peter, how did you know that I was just now literally craving NUMBERS? Never mind all the speculation, guesses, and extrapolation- what are the latest numbers? And like Santa Claus, you answer my wish with a large bagful of the latest hard data of numbers. Thank you, kind sir!
That being said, I think this election is going to involve a bunch of factors that are hard to quantify in the polls. A long-standing male Democrat may - possibly without being conscious of it - ‘feel like a wuss’ if he votes for Harris. A vote for Trump is a ‘manly’ vote. That will be countered by the huge fear factor being ramped up on females that ‘Trump is a Hitler who will take away all of our rights!’ How many votes will be decided last-minute because of psychological factors like these?
You’re right, Peter, the winner of this election cannot be called just yet!
But, the election is over in less than 50 hours! What could possibly happen to affect the outcome in two days time? I’d sure like to hear anyone’s speculation on that!
A major bust by the ABC agency of the XYZ voting machine would do it, except that would require someone at some agency to do something, and with this government that is not going to happen, or will it?
Interesting question?
A major bust involving Dominion voting machines would have an incalculable effect on the election.
There has never been a situation in the whole of US history where the entire results of an election arguably were invalidated, yet that would be one conceivable outcome of such an event.
I'm not even sure the Constitution has a mechanism to address such an event.
Something like that would mean all bets are off, including the ones where the Republic survives.
Not even “military intelligence” could pull it off!
That is! The present administration has - along with Kamala’s campaign staff - a history of incompetence. Let’s hope that works in Trump’s favor!
Edwin, do you also get the sense that Georgia is going for Trump?
And my gut feeling is that Pennsylvania will be for Trump. What do you think?
Without Democratic “ballots” I feel most of the country is for Trump, just how stupid do you have to be to vote for poverty. That said the members of the government, local, state, federal, will vote overwhelmingly for Kamala. Georgia, South Carolina, Florida all are definitely Trump Country, even if they steal one of the three!